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Monday, June 4, 2012

A false debate

The Democratic Party bobbleheads are fussing over whether to raise income taxes on people with incomes over $250,000, or just on those with incomes over $1 million. The major problem that these politicos have is that many of us remember that they pledged to do something along those lines in 2008. But even when they got both the White House and Congress, they didn't do it. To say we're skeptical of their latest sermonettes on the topic is an understatement.

Class envy as a political philosophy, wherein as a matter of public policy we punish and exterminate society's producers and reward and promote society's slackers. Is that what we be advocating? I dunno. Me, I'd be rethinking that one.

But because tax rates increase in accord with the tax capacity of more money on-hand, then larger taxes victimize individuals who enlarge monies. Taxing success in greater portion than taxing suffering makes enriched 'entities' to be victims of succeeding.
oh boo-hoo that's screwed up. society going around making victims.

The American Dream told by corrupt politicians: To be successful and be a picked-on victim.

Society is the sum (integration) of the doing's of all the the people; single individuals do not and cannot produce society. The lexigraphic fallacy of the first phrase can be corrected by a proper word instead of the nonsense word 'producers.' Like, exterminate society's gross enlargements or tumors.

Among the D and R elites there's very little difference on economic and foreign policy issues. Debates on most matters within these policy spheres take place within a remarkably narrow range of "acceptable" opinion. As Paul Krugman astutely points out today, we are already living under the low-tax/low-spending regime the Rs are promising, despite both parties' pretenses to the contrary. We don't have to elect Mitt Romney to see how well it will work - the evidence is already all around us.

The only really sharp divide among this country's elites, and thus the only real reason to continue voting Democratic, is on social/cultural issues: reproductive choice, marriage equality, the role of religion in education and public life, and (to some extent) immigration policy. Electing Romney would be a real setback in these areas, especially when it comes time to choose the next Supreme Court justice.

I am already so disappointed in sellouts on health care, Gitmo, and illegal drone attacks that I am not sure it matters, but I feel obliged to point out that extending tax cuts was the only macroeconomic tool left in the toolshed after the 2010 elections. And raising taxes in 08 would have been devastating, essentially a policy of neutering the economic stimulus that was desperately needed. Raising them in 2010 would have ensured the recent jobs report was even worse. Now I personally would have raised top income taxes anyway and just spent more on the poor, middle class, government jobs, infrastructure investments. But that would have meant 1.5 trillion and above stimulus package in 08--which wasn't going to politically happen with the filibuster. Republicans lie, cheat, and steal--but they know how to play the macroeconomic game to their advantage. Today the fall of the Euro is killing Obama's other major economic play which was US currency devaluation. It worked well—see manufacturing jobs—until Italy crashed and burned.

The Ds are always saying the government needs more tax revenue to pay for programs that are so very important to all of us, but then the solution they always offer is to jack up taxes on "the rich" (or smokers or drinkers or the oil companies or some other unpopular subset), and not on themselves. When a D actually has the honesty to admit that the government they want will actually require jacking up tax rates on everyone, maybe then (and only then) will I believe they're anything but a bunch of BS artists.

Tim, raising "the tax rate to 100%" is what Obama's father called for in his paper, "Problems Facing our Socialism".

He thought all wages/assets should be taxed 100%. Interesting read. Even though President Obama's father left him soon after he was born, his book "Dreams from My Father" says a lot of about the President's dreams-from a father who abandoned him. Obama gives much credence to this father and mother's socialist writings, as well as how they lived.

Road Work

Miles run year to date: 155
At this date last year: 241
Total run in 2015: 271
In 2014: 401
In 2013: 257
In 2012: 129
In 2011: 113
In 2010: 125
In 2009: 67
In 2008: 28
In 2007: 113
In 2006: 100
In 2005: 149
In 2004: 204
In 2003: 269